Michael Fassbender, left, Lupita Nyong’o and Chiwetel Ejiofor in “12 Years a Slave,” winner of the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award. Provided by Fox Searchlight

After sneak previewing at the Telluride Film Festival where it rattled audiences to their core, Steve McQueen’s unrelenting, artistically stunning drama “12 Years a Slave” has gone on to win the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award. Read more…

Sandra Bullock and George Clooney portray astronauts in the quietly roiling 3D drama “Gravity,” which had its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival. Provided by Warner Bros. Pictures

“Gravity,” the space thriller starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney arrived at the 40th Telluride Film Festival with the white-hot heat of critical praise from its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Read more…

Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejifor) on his final day of Freedom in Steve McQueen’s searing “12 Years a Slave.” Provided by Fox Searchlight

With his hair hanging below his shoulder, Brad Pitt sat on the stage of the Palm Theater after the screening of “12 Years a Slave.” There had been low-register buzz earlier in the day that Pitt, whose company Plan B produced the searing drama, would be in the mountain town for the world premiere. Set to open in the fall, “12 Years a Slave” is based on the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man who in 1843 was kidnapped while traveling and sold into slavery. Read more…

The Telluride Film Festival celebrates its 40th anniversary with Robert Redford, Joel and Ethan Coen, Werner Herzog to name a few guests. Photo by Arun Nevader

The Telluride Film Festival is often mentioned in concert with the Cannes Film Festival. And there is some resemblance, were that extravaganza of cinema, glitter and global film buying winnowed down to the essentials, made more casual and transported to a glorious box canyon amid the uncanny peaks of the San Juans. It can feel nicely European. Read more…

Dennis Quaid portrays a many doing everything to keep the family farm in "At Any Price."

Friday, the 39th Telluride Film Festival gets underway.

Notoriously cagey about the program, the fest doesn’t make its lineup public until noon the day before the Labor Day affair kicks off (Aug. 31). So festival-goers get to be overwhelmed and thrilled simultaneously by the challenge of honing the 40 programs — including tributes — plus panels, Q&As and other gatherings, into a manageable, personal film festival of their own.

This year’s tribute honorees, Marion Cottilard, Mads Mikkelsen and Roger Corman, are an eclectic trio: a French actress whose face beckons with the luminous beauty of a silent movie star, a Danish actor capable of menace and anguish, a celebrated B-movie director who mentored some of our finest A-list filmmakers.

Here’s the full list of announced features, fiction and nonfiction in the main program.

Agnieszka Holland’s unflinching, unerring Holocaust drama relates the true story of a sewer worker who discovers a group of Jews hiding in the tunnels beneath the Polish town of Lvov. Mad Moviegoer first saw the film at the Telluride Film Festival.

Each year, the Labor Day-weekend affair makes a habit of showing some of the finest films from indie distributor Sony Pictures Classics. “In Darkness” went on to became a nominee for the best foreign-language film Oscar. Holland and screenwriter David F. Shamoon capture the moral murkiness of survival even as it depicts one man’s improbable journey toward decency.

TELLURIDE — On stage before a screening of “The Road,’ Silver-Medallion recipient Viggo Mortensen recalled his first acting gig.

“When I was seven, I was the ass-end of a dragon.” Having come a long way, the star of David Cronenberg’s “History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises” also related a couple of stories about his son when he was a little boy. In one, Henry Mortensen (now 21) sat on his dad’s lap through a screening of “Dances With Wolves.”

“When we left the theater, he said ‘Not all the Pawnee were bad,'” recounts dad, proud of his son’s sensitivity.

Mortensen’s stories were’t simply anecdotal. They were a bridge into his latest feature. In the much awaited adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s post-Apocalyptic fable, Mortensen is a father whose sole job is to protect his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) in a world gone wrenchingly bleak and cruel. Is it possible to be the “good guys” in a landscape where mistrust is trumped by ravenous hostility?

TELLURIDE — Labor Day marks the movie-packed closing day of the 36th Telluride Film Festival. Yet, were you to scan the official program booklet, you’d find only 11 morning programs listed and a big slot for the annual picnic for pass holders, where grilled chicken breasts and Omaha steaks are plentiful.

The other 28 slots or so are all TBAs — or “to be announced.” So this final morning begins with a visit to the Chuck Jones kiosk to learn what’s been slated. It is like opening a gift on a holiday. Typically, these slots belong to festival hits: the movies that created a buzz in lines and on the gondola that takes festgoers from town to Mountain Village. Because fire codes meant that some had to leave Sunday’s screening of “Up in the Air,” we did learn that there will be a screening today of Reitman’s terrific comedy. But what else is in store?

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Given the ambient chatter, we’re thinking “An Education” starring Carey Mulligan will have another screening. The British newcomer brings a remarkable mix of wisdom and naivete to her role as a bright young woman whose opportunities to attend Oxford meet a detour when she gets involved with an older man. Also on tap perhaps, the “Red Riding” trilogy. The Australian film about Aboriginal lovers, “Samson & Delilah” though grim and nearly dialog free has had many champions.

Yesterday, we saw “London River” right after “Up in the Air,” and worried the way one does at festivals that following up a movie we loved with an unknown might tarnish the glow. It didn’t. Directed by Rachid Bouchareb, the drama tells the story of two parents searching for their children in London in the aftermath of the July 2005 subway-bus suicide bombings. Brenda Blethyn, who was at her first Telluride, and Sotigui Kouyate (above) are quietly vivid as Elizabeth and Ousmane. Our first stop this morning: The Tribute to Viggo Mortensen.

TELLURIDE — Sunday morning Nicolas Cage looked good for a guy who just arrived from the Venice Film Festival in time for a quick Q&A after a screening of “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” directed by Werner Herzog.

Set (and shot) in the Crescent City post-Katrina, Cage plays a detective who mismanages his pain — the outcome of an in-the-line-of-duty accident — with all manner of prescription and illicit drugs. Eva Mendes plays his codependent girlfriend, a call girl.

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He’s corrupt and yet… The legendary Herzog wanted the film to be about “the bliss of evil,” said Cage. For his part, “I wanted it to be about the hideousness of drugs.” Cage’s crazed and calibrated turn is reminiscent of his go-for-broke portrayal of an alcoholic in “Leaving Las Vegas.” But if that was a “photo realist” approach, helped by a “drinking coach,” this powerfully physical performance is, he thinks, impressionistic.

It was a “filtering of the experiences through my sober mind.” Cage told the audience he hadn’t had a drink for five years “for personal reasons.” An expanded note: Our waitress at Honga’s later that night reported that Cage, who was leaving the restaurant with family as we entered, was lovely.

Telluride — Taking the stage Sunday afternoon at the Palm theater for “Up in the Air,” director Jason Reitman told the oversold house, “I just finished this film three days ago. Which means some of you started getting in line then.”

It was a great jest about the Telluride ritual of queuing in advance for a film you may get shut out of. Just this morning we met a group of Dallas gals (Texas is well represented here). They’d waited in line for nearly four hours before being turned away from the first sneak preview (or To Be Announced screening) of Reitman’s movie.

They were not bitter. The waiting game has become part of “The Show.” Just as “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Juno” were Telluride TBA programs worth waiting for and waiting for, the comedy starring George Clooney as a guy who comes into companies to help fire employees, did not disappoint. Far from it. Reitman (“Juno” and “Thank You for Smoking”) proves himself a generous, gifted observer of the sad-funny qualities of the American soul.

Film & theater critic Lisa Kennedy likes to watch -- a lot. She also has a fondness for no-man’s lands, contested territories and Venn Diagrams. She believes the best place to live is usually on the border between two vibrant neighborhoods. Where better to apply this penchant for overlap and divergence than covering film and theater – two arts that owe so much to each other yet offer radically idiosyncratic pleasures? In another life, Kennedy was an Obie judge. In this one, she’s been a Pulitzer Prize judge in criticism, an Independent Spirit Award jurist and Colorado’s first member of the National Society of Film Critics.

More than a mash-up of the Running Lines and Diary of a Madmoviergoer blogs, Stage, Screen & In Between offers engaged takes on Colorado theater and film and pointed views on news from both coasts and both industries. Culture lovers, add your voices. Culture-makers, share your production journal entries and photos.